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The two, both now 49, stayed in touch, and Kimbrough, who just returned from almost six months aboard the International Space Station, chatted with Roberts from space the day before the Pretty Woman star sat down with PEOPLE.

Roberts explained:

“ a boy I went to school with who was smart and a football player and was handsome. And dated the prettiest girl — not as pretty as his wife, but back then was the prettiest girl. And he went on to become an astronaut and he is in space — and we Skyped with him yesterday.”

“He, like, floated and told us all about this space mission that he is on,” Roberts continued. “And I told him, ‘You are officially the coolest guy I went to high school with.’ ”

Kimbrough just may be. After his days as Roberts’ classmate in Smyrna, Ga., he went on to earn a Presidential Scholarship to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y, Smyrna Patch reported, where he captained the baseball team while earning a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering.

From there he became a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, piloting Apache helicopters in the Gulf War. He earned a Master of Science degree in operations research from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1998.

He was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 2004, and in 2008 went on his first mission — a 16-day, six-million-mile supply delivery mission to the International Space Station as a member of the STS-126 Space Shuttle Endeavour crew.